Making comparisons between metropolitan regions around the world is fashionable. Newman and Kenworthy's Cities and automobile dependency (1989) was one of the first attempts to collect data from cities around the world and make systematic comparisons (although highly criticized: see, for example, Gomez-Ibanez, 1991). Recent books (Simmond and Hack, 2000; Susteren, 2005) and even a summer 2007 e...

Ethernet has been the indisputable technology of choice for the local area networks (LANs) for more than 30 years. Its popularity is due to its versatility, plug-n-play feature, and low cost. It has transformed from a CSMA/CD technology providing low throughput to a full duplex link increasing the throughput 1000 folds. Despite these improvements, Ethernet is still restricted to local area netw...